We know that three or four visibly Indigenous prospective jurors were subject to a peremptory challenge by the accused. They had no prisons, yet had fully functioning societies for thousands of years. Wilfrid Laurier University has launched a new course, Gladue Principles: Indigenous Peoples and the Canadian Criminal Justice System, which will be offered for the first time starting on Jan. 15, 2021. Correctional Investigator Howard Sapers concluded that these inequalities amount to “systemic discrimination.”. That the Canadian justice system has failed Aboriginal peoples at every turn is by now well known. Canada has a very high remand rate; there is blatant discrimination against Aboriginals because their rate is significantly higher in comparison to their counterparts (Mildren, 2008). Canadian Criminal Justice System By Shaista Asmi Social Connectedness Fellow 2019 Samuel Centre for Social Connectedness www.socialconnectedness.org August 2019 . The reason I focused on jury selection and wrote about it in the Globe and Mail is that once you have 12 people impaneled on a jury, under Canadian law, rightly or wrongly, you’re never going to know why they reached that decision. How hopeful are you that this is a turning point? National data that does exist to identify Indigenous people in the criminal justice system include the General Social Survey (GSS) on self-reported victimization, police-reported homicide statistics, and data on provincial/territorial and federal custody. Throughout Canada, a number of courts have been created that deal specifically with these forms of justice. It was … In this case it was Mr. Stanley and his lawyer. Earlier this year, the Office of the Correctional Investigator issued a release regarding the incarceration of Indigenous people in Canadian prisons. ‘one size fits all’ approach to sentencing, Bill C-10 adopts a formalistic approach to equality that will serve to perpetuate the historic disadvantage of marginalized groups.”. What are the chances the verdict will be appealed? They often try to incorporate Indigenous cultural practices and understandings of justice. But peremptory challenges can also be used by the Crown. The traditions that are left are fragmentary and watered down, further whitewashing Aboriginal identity. A peremptory challenge is simply the accused looking at the prospective juror and basically saying “I don’t like the look of this person and I want that person kept off.”. Why did the prosecution seek a second-degree murder charge, and why couldn’t the jury compromise on a lesser charge? . ] Kran, from the UN Human Rights Office, acknowledged that despite access to justice being “firmly rooted” in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other human rights standards, “for many indigenous peoples obtaining access to justice may still seem like a distant goal.” Kent Roach (above) is a professor of law at U of T. He has represented Indigenous groups in interventions before the court, including in R. v. Gladue, which advises that lower courts should consider an Indigenous offender’s background when making sentencing decisions (Bernard Weil/Toronto Star via Getty Images). Racism in the justice system is the root cause of wrongful prosecutions and the over-representation of Indigenous peoples in prison today. In 1999 in R. v. Gladue, the Court found that the over-representation of Indigenous people in Canada’s prisons was a “crisis in the Canadian criminal justice system.” The Court found that over-representation was “only the tip of the iceberg insofar as the estrangement of the aboriginal peoples from the Canadian criminal justice system is concerned.” In They represent only 3% of the Canadian adult population, 3 and this proportion has been increasing – in the late 1990s, it was slightly more than 10%. The Canadian criminal justice system has failed Indigenous peoples, said the Honourable Tony Mandamin during his keynote on Tuesday, Mar. Alarmingly, Aboriginal women, who make up only four per cent of the Canadian female population, constitute 34 per cent of the female federal inmate population. Since 1989, 13 provincial and federal inquiries, commissions and studies have examined the issue of Indigenous peoples and the justice system in Canada. For example, a Gladue Court might start with a smudging ceremony or have Elders or Knowledge Keepers start with a song or prayer. “It’s ironic that the Committee … Indigenous people are overrepresented in the Canadian criminal justice system as both victims/survivors Footnote 8 and accused/convicted persons. In 2011, the Harper government announced it would spend $158 million on prison expansion in four provinces, and $2 billion over the next five years to take in an estimated 4,000 new inmates. The concern about jury selection is a real one. The Supreme Court has said the fact that more than a quarter of our prisoners are Indigenous is a crisis in the justice system, so then when the same criminal justice system appears to fail either the missing Indigenous women and girls or, many people would say, Colten Boushie, then it’s kind of a … That’s still not happening. Indigenous peoples are vastly overrepresented in the Canadian criminal justice system. Importantly, Canadian Justice, Indigenous Injustice provides crucial background that many who weighed in on Stanley’s criminal case failed to recognize: an analysis of Treaty 6, the legal agreements between Indigenous peoples and settlers on the land where Boushie was killed. Some courthouses have only one day or a few days that Gladue Court is available each week. In this case, I think a troubling factor is the Crown didn’t ask the jurors who actually served on the jury whether racial bias against an Indigenous victim would prevent them from deciding the case impartially. (2018). We have the Manitoba Aboriginal Justice Inquiry recommending this in 1991. News by. An Ipsos Reid poll commissioned by Postmedia News revealed that 64% of respondents thought that Indigenous peoples already receive too much support from Canadian taxpayers. D ear Canada, We need to talk. We don’t know how many of those were Indigenous, but all of the evidence points to Indigenous people being under-represented for various reasons among that 200. In this case, because the accused was charged with second-degree murder and because they were going to impanel 14 jurors, not 12, because they wanted alternatives, both the accused and the Crown had 14. Kent Roach, a professor of law and public policy in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law, says many Indigenous people are excluded from juries through peremptory challenges. “The Canadian criminal justice system has failed the Aboriginal peoples of Canada — First Nations, Inuit and Métis people, on-reserve and off-reserve, urban and rural — in all territorial and governmental jurisdictions,” the commission said in 1996. What’s more, numerous justice inquiries and commissions have found that racism is pervasive in Canada’s entire justice system; from police to prosecutors to judges. However, Canada’s federal government has begun to address the widespread neglect and failed policies felt by past generations of indigenous people. Notably, the Canadian government has failed to respond to the calls for justice of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls inquiry. Nation-wide, Canadians are living through a “renewed interest” in the systemic failings of the criminal justice system, primarily its treatment of Indigenous and Black people, she says. Prior to colonization, Aboriginal peoples were autonomous and self-governed. Only this can correct the systemic discrimination that Aboriginal people face in the Canadian criminal justice system. Decades ago, the Marshall Inquiry found the police and justice system were systematically biased against Black peoples and Indigenous peoples, but little has changed. Clearly, the system lacks legitimacy in the eyes of Aboriginal people… Canadas justice system is not for Indigenous people: Reasonable Doubt . Unfortunately, Parliament – and this goes for governments both Conservative and Liberal – did absolutely nothing about that. Systemic racism in our justice system is: 1 While Canada now imprisons fewer and fewer young people, more and more of those young people are Indigenous. Unfortunately, the Harper government seems disinterested in rectifying the situation. I worry that that is taking us away from the merits, both in terms of what we do in terms of jury selection in Canada but also the bigger issue of how do we reform the justice system, or how do we change the justice system, or how do we allow Indigenous communities to play a bigger role in the justice system. The Viens Commission’s report plainly states that the Quebec justice system has “failed” in its dealings with Indigenous peoples, and discriminates against them in a systemic way, whether they are victims or accused. 1 Rudin J. “That Indigenous Canadians are at a disproportionately higher risk of being involved in the criminal justice system, both as offenders and as victims, is an intolerable situation that our Government is working very hard to address. The Criminal Justice System has set up this certain criteria, which evidently happens to discriminate more against Indigenous peoples just by the virtue of the questions they have asked (LaPraire, 2002). It was also found that Aboriginal people on average faced 25 per cent more charges than non-Aboriginal people, and that Aboriginal people had only a 21 per cent chance of being granted bail compared with 56 per cent for non-Aboriginal people. These so-called restorative justice initiatives erode Aboriginal traditions by taking them out of their intended context and placing them within a western European system that is based on totally incompatible values. In 1991 the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba found systemic failures and systemic discrimination and recommended that peremptory challenges be abolished. http://unsr.jamesanaya.org/visit-to-canada/united-nations-special-rapporteur-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples-to-carry-out-official-visit-to-canada-from-12-to-20-october-2013. Background. For example, each inmate in the correctional system costs the federal government approximately $110,000 per year, while one year of supervised release costs only $30,000. Indigenous court provides a solution to overrepresentation in Canadian justice system. Of self-government failing Aboriginal people, more and more of those young people are overrepresented in the Globe Mail. 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